EDITED BY H. ALBERTUS BOLI, LL.D.

THE ADVERTISEMENT PLACED by Mlle Uzanne, purveyor of fine fashions for ramparts and barricades, provoked much discussion of the battle of Bull Run, or Manassas from the Southern point of view, which was a great disappointment to the crowd of Unionist picnickers who had gathered to watch the entertainment. Frequent correspondent “Martin the Mess” wondered whether Mlle Uzanne might have a boutique in Manassas, explaining later, “I was trying to reference the First Battle of Bull Run, which took place near Manassas (and thus is called as such by certain ornery historians), and at which fine ladies and gentlemen from the Capital brought picnic lunches so as to observe the rebels get a right good thrashing, but were quickly forced to flee with much soiling of petticoats when the Confederates proved unexpectedly victorious. I figured, that was a good place to find gentlewomen in need of battle-observing fashions. If only to replace the soiled petticoats.”

It is a strange fact that the mostly rural Southerners tended to name Civil War battles after nearby towns and cities, whereas the much more urbanized North named many of the same battles after streams and rivers. To this day, Bull Run marks the traditional boundary between what southern Virginians would consider the real Virginia and Yankee Virginia, the part that was occupied by the North in the Civil War and is still regarded as Union-occupied territory by true sons of the South. The area of Northern occupation is expanding, however, and commuter trains now reach out like kraken arms from the wicked Union capital of Washington to Manassas and even as far south as Fredericksburg, which proves that thousands of traitors to the Lost Cause have infiltrated the real Virginia.

The real Virginia has, however, made use of its nominal administrative control over Yankee Virginia to exact its own cunning revenge by naming all the highways after Confederate war criminals.

It might also be noted that the first Virginia “Welcome Center” heading west from Your Nation’s Capital is to be found on I-66 at Bull Run. Similarly, one must travel to the south bank of the Rappahanock near Fredericksburg on I-95 before being similarly welcomed into the arms of the Great Commonwealth.